Events
Date of Birth: unknown.
Place of Birth: unknown.
Date of Death: 13 April 1519.
Place of Death: unknown.
Thomas had died by the time his wife Joan made her will. The date in his Thomas’s Sussex inquisition post mortem for his deats in inconsistent with the date of the ipm itself, and presumably one year off. Thomas apparently also had a Hampshire ipm which I haven’t seen.
Relationships
Father: John Cooke.
This relationship is given in the will of Thomas’s wife Joan.
Mother: uncertain.
The will of Thomas’s wife Joan notes that John had three wives: Mary, Isabel, and another Isabel.
Spouse: Joan Howles. Married before 1481.
This relationship is recorded in Joan’s will.
Children:
(Complete source citations for facts about the children on this page are currently outside of the scope of this project.)
Thomas Cooke (died before 1519).
Margaret Cooke (died 1525/6) married Edmund Threle.
Mary Cooke married John Gunter.
Joan Cooke (died 1545) married John Covert.
Evidence
from the Calendar of Patent Rolls:
1504 November 3. Westminster.
Licence for John Leye, alias Leigh, of the Isle of Wight, and Agnes his wife and John Frye, son of the said Alice, to hold jointly and severally the following possessions according to the several demises thereof made to them, …the pasture called Clyveland in the said island demised to the said John, Agnes and John in survivorship on 7 March, 21 Edward IV [1480/1], by Thomas Coke and Joan his wife, and also at Michaelmas, 2 Richard III, by John Gilberte, esquire, and Joan his wife, and Robert Gilberte, their son and heir apparent…
from the National Archives catalogue:
WILL (draft)
Of Dame Joan Bowreman, widow
A life interest in lands called Morteins Land in Bembridge, parish of Brading, to be granted to Eleanor Bowreman, late wife of Thomas Bowreman the younger; with remainder failing her own issue, to Thomas Cooke and Jane his wife and heirs of said Jane Cooke.
All profit arising from lands in Brading, Borthwood, Adgestone, Newport, Fairlee, Kite, Pan and Lymington with the mill at Shide to be received by John Lyse, John Gilbert and John Cook, feoffees, who are to pay 10 marks to a priest to sing for the souls of Joan Bowreman, Thomas Bowreman her husband, John Roucle and Jane his wife (Joan Bowreman's parents).
To Margaret, daughter of Thomas Bowreman the younger and Eleanor his wife, the profits of the said lands for 4 years; after the death of Joan Bowreman, when she is married, to Alice and Jane Bowreman, daughters of her son Richard Bowreman.
Lands in Brerding, Bordewood, Adgeston and Adderton to her heirs and for failure of her heirs to Thomas Dylend and for failure of heirs to Joan Gilbert, daughter and heir of John Hacket of Milton.
Appended: GIFT (draft) 1 doc
(i) Joan Bowreman
(ii) John Lyse, John Gilbert and John Cook, esqs.; Thomas Cook and Robert Gilbert, gents.; and Edmund de Crome, rector of church of Brook.
Lands and tenements called Morteins Land in parish of Brading, and lands, tenements, meadows, pasture lands and appurtenances situated in Borthwood, Adgestone, Arreton, Newport, Fairlee, Kite, Panne, Ryde, Dyer's Down and Lymington.
27 May 1496
In the Calendar of the Close Rolls, Thomas Coke of Rustyngton co. Sussex is a feoffee in 1502.
from the National Archives Catalogue:
E 118/1/38
Indenture of lease by which the Abbess and convent of the monastery of Syon, Middx, granted the manor place of Littlehampton, Sussex, to Thomas Cooke, esq
5 Hen VIII Mar 16
Inquisition post mortem:
Thomas Cooke, esq. v. 34, no. 21.
Arundell, 20 October 11 Henry VIII [1519]. Died 13 April 11 Henry VIII sic [1520]
Heir, granddaughter Mary Cooke, viz., daughter and heir of a certain Thos. Cooke, junr., son T.C., aged 3 years.
Lands.-- Moiety of manor of Rustyngton, messuages and land in Goring and Lytilhampton, and by deed, 15 April 3 Henry VIII [1512]., enfeoffed trustees to use of himself and his heirs, and his last will and after made will. Lands in Sussex, Hampshyre, Isle of Wight or elsewhere. Lands in Goryng to wife for life and 10 years after her death, and then to be sold and £100 given to my daughter Mary to her marriage. Wife Johnne ex’ix.
from the Victoria County History of Hampshire (5: sub Arreton):
…The manor [of East Standen] then seems to have passed to the Howles, who were connected by marriage with the Bramshotts (see North Budbridge), for William Howles died seised of it in 1480, leaving an only daughter Joan, married to Thomas Cooke of Rookley. It was during the Cookes' tenure that Standen had a notable tenant in the person of the Princess Cecily, third daughter of Edward IV, who retired to the Isle of Wight with her second husband Sir Thomas Kymbe or Kyme in 1503 and died there, being buried in Quarr Abbey.
Thomas Cooke before his death in 1519 seems to have settled East Standen upon his daughters, for it did not pass to his granddaughter and heiress Mary, but became divided into third parts.
…In 1428 and 1431 Rookley was in the possession of Richard Coke or Cooke, a gentleman of Sussex, who was seised of a quarter fee there, another quarter held in 1346 by William Taunton and others not being answered for in 1428, as it was divided between Walter Veer and Thomas Lisle. The Cooke family seem to have remained at Rookley until the death of Thomas Cooke in 1519, leaving an infant granddaughter Mary.
Easter gives a description of the arms on what is traditionally said to be the monument of Thomas’s son in law John Gunter:
The base of the monument shows three square cusped panels carrying shields of arms separated by two narrow trefoiled panels. Each of the shields of arms display the Gunter arms–Sable, three gauntlets argent within a bordure or from John Gunter of Chilworth–impaling quarterly of six 2 & 6 Cooke of Rustington (Gules, three crescents or, a canton ermine, a martlet sable for difference), 1 & 5 de Bohun of Midhurst (Or, a cross azure) and 3 & 4 Howles of East Standen, Isle of Wight (Sable, three Talbots heads argent).
The 1530/1633 visitations of Sussex (p. 53, p. 73) have what seem to be somewhat garbled pedigrees.
Commentary
Hyde (HoP) makes the M.P. Thomas Cooke of Winchester, (died 1530/1) a son of the Thomas of this page, but the inquisition post mortem in the Evidence section above seems to make clear that Thomas’s son Thomas had died by 1519. Still, they were likely related. A Cooke family was still living in Arreton in the 1560s: a widow Elizabeth and her children James (1560 PCC will), John, Richard (1561 PCC will, held the manor of Budbridge), Mary, and Anne. Richard had three children: James, Richard, and Mary.
References
Attree, F.W.T. Notes of Post Mortem Inquisitions Taken in Sussex 1 Henry VII to 1649 and After. (Sussex Record Society v. 14, 1912).
Calendar of the Close Rolls. Henry VII vol. 2 1500-1509. (1963).
Comber, John. Sussex Genealogies (1931). Online “Community Tree” at FamilySearch extracted from this work.
Easter, Clive. “The three Gunter family monuments at Racton, West Sussex” in Sussex Archaeological Collections 156 (2018) pp. 147-158.
Hyde, Patricia and Alan Davidson. “Coke (Cooke), Thomas II (by 1493-1530/31), of Winchester, Hants and Lincoln’s Inn, London” in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558. (1982).
'Parishes: Arreton', in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5, ed. William Page (London, 1912), pp. 139-151.
Swales, R.J.W. “Covert, John (by 1501 - 1558), of Ifield and Slaugham, Suss.” in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558. (1982).
The Visitations of the County of Sussex Made and Taken in the Years 1530 and 1633-4 (W. Bruce Bannerman ed.) (Harleian Society v. 53, 1905).
Will of Joane Cooke of Rustyngton. Proved 1525 in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.